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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#221

Post by smcin »

homebrewer wrote: post #46
irrational wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched "Firefox" in the app store. The top result is Google Chrome with an Ad indicator (Google paid for higher placement). Second is Firefox.

Sometimes it's good to live in a region that no one cares about. I just searched for Firefox in the Android Play Store application, there were no ads, and the first result was Firefox. I also don't get any ads in American and UK podcasts for the same reason (except for those read by the host, but there are few of those and they're easy to ignore).

Can you tell us which region are you in? (Iceland?)

Does anyone publish a scorecard of search results vs Google region settings?

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#222

Post by cmrdporcupine »

justapassenger wrote: post #59
peab wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they didn't - hence the ads

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

Google managed to dance the knife edge there for a lot longer than most though. AdWords made so much money in a fairly unobtrusive way, that they were able to scale it out without pissing a lot of people off. That and it was actually even sometimes useful.

They clearly decided to just say "fuck it" though. Sometime after Ruth Porat replaced Patrick Pichette and especially after Sundar took the helm (both happened while I worked there) but most especially in the last 3 years.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#223

Post by charcircuit »

mc32 wrote: post #97
amatecha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to dig up this link, 1999 review[0]: "Google (www.google.com) is a pure search engine - no weather, no news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distractions, no portal litter. Nothing but a fast-loading search site. Reward them with a visit." [0] https://i.redd.it/uea6u7c4oje31.jpg

That didn't last long till they added paid results but at least they highlighted the paid results from the organic results... Those were they days when they used to have the motto of not being Evil. Accordingly, now, they are.

>they used to have the motto of not being Evil

They still do have it.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#224

Post by bawolff »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #213
justapassenger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

I think it's a mistake to think of these cycles as inevitable, and that it's guaranteed that some small fry will disrupt the current giants. Yes, they may have happened in the past, but large companies are much more cognizant of the cycles of disruption now than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Microsoft was a behemoth in the late 80s and they're currently number 2 market cap in the world. Many folks on this board may b…

These cycles have been going on a lot longer than the last 40 years. Everything eventually dies.

Rome used to rule the world; sure it took about a thousand years, but it ultimately didn't last.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#225

Post by chongli »

boringg wrote: post #111
justapassenger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

Wouldn't it be nice if some companies instead of ramping up ads for revenue passed along the value to consumers? Once they made their money back on the original investments convert to a lifestyle and provide a valuable product without squeezing every penny our of it and in the end killing it. One day maybe.

They did pass on a lot of value to consumers. They used their profits to grow, build Gmail, buy and grow YouTube, build Android.

Just running Google as-is without ads would have produced less value in the long run. Plus the SEO tide (which relied on DoubleClick ads that weren't yet owned by Google) began to rise and would've drowned Google Search much earlier if they hadn't grown.

Where I think Google took the bad (for consumers) turn was when they purchased DoubleClick and began to consolidate the entire ad business. Instead of losing money to SEO spammers, they began to make money. This put Google into a conflict of interest against their own users. Ever since then they've been piling onto that conflict of interest, draining more and more value from their products.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#226

Post by captainkrtek »

jpmattia wrote: post #210

Like many of you, I serve as IT support for family. Some of those family are beginning to slip cognitively, so I'd like to say: Fk google for doing this. You are confusing my relatives who cannot tell the difference between your ad-spam and actual links, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you are now taking advantage of old people. I'm trying to install adblockers (uBlock) and move them over to chatgpt when po…

Kagi is quite good, its clean, simple, and not much money.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#227

Post by convolvatron »

laserlight wrote: post #138
bhartzer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also am old enough to remember when their motto was "Don't be evil."

Which has been doublespeak from day one.

I knew larry and sergei socially when they were grad students. I completely believe that when they started that was a genuine sentiment. I wonder at what point they realized personally that that was gone

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#228

Post by smcin »

rchaud wrote: post #207
miladyincontrol wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely is. I fear for the older generations and less tech minded people who google their bank, and get some random phishing site. Or similarly google what should be libre software and get some random malware on a site that looks 'close enough'. Lets call it what it is, a cancer, one that literally enables countless bad actors and purely for a search engine's own profit. In theory theres a time and place for ad…

It's already happened to an elderly family member who was trying to troubleshoot a printer problem. The top results were 1-800 hotlines run by scammers looking to get remote access to their machine to "fix" the issue. Google has hordes of these companies padding their pockets and won't lift a finger to remove them.

Searching for official manufacturer manuals/user guides for appliances is also another goldmine for third-parties.
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